Performance

For the ZUK Z1 Lenovo chose the tried and true Snapdragon 801 chipset. Once a flagship chip, it offered great performance with good battery life, though things in the high end have progressed since last year. In Z1's price range, however, it's mostly octa-core processors based on Cortex-A53 and low-power GPUs. Plus, the ZUK has 3GB of RAM, more than most of its competition. Overall, we're quite satisfied with the ZUK Z1 equipment.

Let's start with the processor - four Krait 400 cores at 2.5GHz should have the lead over Cortex-A53 cores, but as it turns out that's not the case. Basemark OS 2.0 gives it good marks for overall performance - below the OnePlus 2 and Meizu MX5, which have four powerful A57 cores and four A53s - but above the all-A53 crowd.

Single and multi-core performance is nothing spectacular though, even for this price range.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

OnePlus 21622

Meizu MX51252

ZUK Z11178

Xiaomi Redmi Note 21063

Lenovo K3 Note984

Meizu m2 note673

Basemark OS 2.0 (single-core)

Higher is better

OnePlus 25301

Xiaomi Redmi Note 23434

Meizu MX53262

Lenovo K3 Note2990

ZUK Z11871

Meizu m2 note1709

Basemark OS 2.0 (multi-core)

Higher is better

Lenovo K3 Note24538

Meizu MX522976

Xiaomi Redmi Note 221516

OnePlus 216798

ZUK Z110490

Meizu m2 note8105

Geekbench and AnTuTu 5 are not impressed either, putting the ZUK Z1 at or near the bottom. Krait was a great core in its day, but its time has passed.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

Meizu MX55110

Xiaomi Redmi Note 24589

OnePlus 24429

Lenovo K3 Note4067

Meizu m2 note2649

ZUK Z12341

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

Meizu MX548915

OnePlus 247207

Xiaomi Redmi Note 246307

Lenovo K3 Note46283

ZUK Z143088

Meizu m2 note32054

Moving on to graphics, the Adreno 330 should ace the 1080p test, though mid-range chipsets pack GPUs that are a generation ahead of it. That's Adreno 430 (OnePlus 2), Mali-T760 (Lenovo K3 Note), PowerVR G6200 (Xiaomi Redmi Note 2). These GPU names should be familiar if you've looked into the specs of current flagships.

For older games (OpenGL ES 2.0) and newer games (OpenGL ES 3.0) the GPU on the Snapdragon 801 should offer a similar performance to the newer mid-range GPUs. Only the OnePlus 2 showed competitive scores (no surprise, it uses Adreno 330's successor though at the same 1080p resolution).

Note that OpenGL ES 3.1 is not supported on the Adreno 3xx series.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

OnePlus 248

ZUK Z128

Meizu MX527

Xiaomi Redmi Note 223

Lenovo K3 Note15

Meizu m2 note12

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

OnePlus 246.7

ZUK Z127

Meizu MX527

Xiaomi Redmi Note 223

Lenovo K3 Note15

Meizu m2 note12

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

ZUK Z127

OnePlus 222

Meizu MX510

Xiaomi Redmi Note 28.5

Lenovo K3 Note6.1

Meizu m2 note2.3

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

ZUK Z128

OnePlus 222

Meizu MX59.5

Xiaomi Redmi Note 27.9

Lenovo K3 Note6.1

Meizu m2 note2.3

Basemark X gives the ZUK Z1 fairly high scores, but puts it behind the Adreno 430-powered OnePlus 2 (because this test would account for the difference in screen resolution).

Basemark X

Higher is better

OnePlus 221937

ZUK Z113596

Meizu MX510403

Xiaomi Redmi Note 28518

Lenovo K3 Note5656

Meizu m2 note3946

The Cyanogen Browser is still very new (added in CM12.1) so we decided to use Chrome for the benchmarks instead. Kraken 1.1 shows very good JavaScript performance, ZUK obviously picked a well-tuned engine.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

OnePlus 26808

ZUK Z18409

Xiaomi Redmi Note 29504

Lenovo K3 Note10712

Meizu MX511414

Meizu m2 note14462

General web browsing, as measured by BrowserMark 2.1, is fairly close to the modern chipsets, beating the Meizu m2 note by quite some distance, losing to the OnePlus 2 by a smaller margin.

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

OnePlus 22055

Lenovo K3 Note1554

Xiaomi Redmi Note 21505

Meizu MX51471

ZUK Z11278

Meizu m2 note656

To summarize, the Snapdragon 801 was a decent choice for the ZUK Z1. True, the new mid-range chipsets offer similar performance to this former flagship chipset and they even take the lead in CPU tests with their multiple cores. In the graphics department however the Snapdragon 801 was able to show the whippersnappers a thing or two. It can't play OpenGL ES 3.1 games though, so you'll miss out on the cutting edge gaming tech but that's hardly a thing at the moment. Browsing performance is solid for the class.